Confucius and the West: Jesuits, Jansenists, and Libertines
- Format:
- Journal Article
- Year:
- 2016
- Journal Title:
- Horizons (South Korea)
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- 1
- Language:
- Abstract:
This essay considers early uses of Confucius in the West, from Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) to François de La Mothe Le Vayer (1588–1672). First, Ricci acknowledges that Confucius’s teaching, although close to the natural law, is found wanting when it comes to God, the nature of the soul, and the afterlife; yet he dims his criticism to please the Chinese literati elite while insisting on the better part of their traditions. Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628) in turn endorses this mainly favorable view of Confucius as he directly addresses a large Western audience to justify the Jesuits’ practice in China and their embracing the praiseworthy habits of the Confucians. In contrast the Jansenists in Europe advocate a stronger version of the Augustinian worldview and see the very idea of “virtuous” pagans as blasphemous and heretical; against them, the views of the Jesuits and the whole movement of devout humanism is (somewhat unexpectedly) upheld by the French philosopher and early freethinker François de La Mothe Le Vayer, whose book La vertu des payens (1642) borrows from Trigault’s account in a chapter devoted to Confucius, “the Chinese Socrates,” in which he defends the idea that virtue is found among pagans as well as among Christians, against the views of the Jansenists, whom he saw as his intellectual foes and the foes of his protector, Cardinal de Richelieu.
- Who (Jesuits):
- What (Subjects):
- Where (Locations):
- When (Centuries):
- Publisher URL:
- Page Range:
- 57–74
- ISSN:
- 2093-5943